THE ELECTIONS TO THE DUMA AND
THE TACTICS OF THE RUSSIAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS

The Duma election results demonstrate the physiognomy and strength of the various classes.

The franchise in Russia is neither direct nor equal. In the first place, the peasants elect one delegate per ten households; these, in turn, elect a peasant delegate from among their number; the delegates so elected then elect a peasant elector and the latter, together with electors from other social-estates, elect the deputies to the Duma. The system is the same for the landowner, urban and worker curias, the number of electors from each curia being fixed by law in the interests and to the advantage of the upper classes, the landowners and the bourgeoisie. Furthermore, not only the revolutionary parties, but the opposition parties as well are subjected to the most barbarous, the most illegal police oppression, then there is the complete absence of freedom of the press and assembly, arbitrary arrests and banishment, as well as the military courts operating in the greater part of Russia, and the state of emergency connected with them.

How, then, under such circumstances, could the new Duma have turned out more oppositional and more revolutionary than the First?

To find an answer to this question, we must first of all examine the figures published in the Cadet Rech on the distribution of the electors according to party, in connection with the party political composition of the Second Duma; these figures cover about nine-tenths of all the electors in European Russia (Poland, the Caucasus, Siberia, etc., being excluded). Let us take the five chief po-

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litical groups, since more detailed information on electors' political leanings is not available. The first group consists of the Rights. To this group belong those known as the Black Hundreds (the monarchists, the Union of the Russian People, etc.), who champion a return to complete autocracy in its purest form, favour unbridled military terror against revolutionaries, and instigate assassinations (like that of Duma Deputy Herzenstein), pogroms, etc. Further, this group includes the so-called Octobrists (this is the name given in Russia to the party of the big industrialists), who joined the counter-revolution immediately after the tsar's manifesto of October 17, 1905, and who now support the government in every possible way. This party frequently forms election blocs with the monarchists.

The second group consists of those belonging to no party. We shall see later that many electors and deputies, especially those of the peasantry, hid behind this name in order to escape repressions for their revolutionary convictions.

The liberals form the third group. The liberal parties are headed by the Constitutional-Democrats (known as the Cadet Party), or "people's freedom" party. This party constitutes the Centre in the Russian revolution; it stands between the landlords and the peasants. The bourgeoisie tries to reconcile these two classes. The assessment of this party of the liberal bourgeoisie -- the Cadets -- is a most important point of difference between the two trends within Russian Social-Democracy.

For opportunist reasons and not because of their political convictions, the Polish Black Hundreds are on the side of the Russian liberals in the Duma; this is the party of "National-Democrats" who in Poland use every means, including informing, lock-outs and assassination, to struggle against the revolutionary proletariat.

The fourth group is the Progressists. This is not the name of a party, but, like the term "non-party" is a meaningless conventional term whose primary purpose is to serve as a screen against police persecution.

Lastly, the fifth group is the Lefts. To this group belong the Social-Democratic and Socialist-Revolutionary parties, the Popular Socialists (approximately the equivalent of

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the French Radical Socialists) and those known as the Trudoviks [*] -- a still completely amorphous peasant democratic organisation. In their class character, the Trudoviks, Popular Socialists and Socialist-Revolutionaries are petty bourgeois and peasant democrats. Sometimes electors from some revolutionary groups attempted to hide under the general name of "Lefts" during the election campaign, in order the better to escape police persecution.

The Rech figures will now show the correctness of the conclusions we have drawn concerning the social composition of the parties.

As can be seen from the tables (on pages 199 and 200), the big cities constitute a special group -- St. Petersburg elects 6 deputies, Moscow 4, Warsaw and Tashkent 2 each, the remainder 1 each, a total of 27 deputies for 17 cities. The remaining deputies to the Duma are elected at joint meetings of electors of all four curias for each gubernia; but in addition to this the peasant electors elect one deputy from the peasant curia for each gubernia. Thus we get three groups of deputies -- from the gubernia electoral meeting, from the peasant curia and from the big cities.

A few dozen electors from the progressive or Left bloc could be ascribed to the various party groups only on the basis of estimates; on the whole, however, these figures provide the fullest and most reliable material for an understanding of the class structure of the various Russian parties.

During the elections to the Second Duma a fierce struggle was waged between the two wings of Social-Democracy, between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, on the question of whether to enter into a bloc with the Cadets or with the Trudoviks against the Cadets. In Moscow the supporters of the Bolsheviks were stronger; a Left bloc was formed there, with the Mensheviks taking part in it. In St. Petersburg the Bolsheviks were also stronger, and a Left bloc was formed there as well, but the Mensheviks did not take part and withdrew from the organisation. A split occurred and still continues. The Mensheviks referred to the Black Hundred danger, i.e., they feared a victory of the Black Hundreds at the elections because of the votes of the Lefts and the liberals being split. The Bolsheviks declared that this danger was an invention of the liberals, whose one purpose was to attract petty-bourgeois and proletarian democracy under the wing of bourgeois liberals. The figures show that the total number of votes cast for the Lefts and the Cadets was more than double the combined votes cast for the Octobrists and the monarchists.** A split vote for the opposition,. therefore, could not have helped the victory of the Right.